Wave Issue 9804 3/27/98 Article 5-01

*** Chips

PowerVR Announces Second-Generation 3D Technology
(February. 23)

NEC Electronics Inc. and VideoLogic announced the PowerVR
Second-Generation technology, a significantly enhanced version
of the original PowerVR 3D architecture, which spawned the PCX1
and PCX2 3D graphics chips.

The new technology achieves an increase in performance of five
times PCX2, PowerVR's 1997 chip-level product, and a fill rate
of two times PCX2. PowerVR Second-Generation products will
deliver 1.2m polygons/second and a fill rate of 120-
megapixels/second equivalent.

PowerVR Second-Generation technology achieves industry-leading
performance by incorporating a number of design attributes. The
new technology provides full floating-point geometry and a
texture setup engine on-chip; hardware tile acceleration;
hardware translucency sorting; and high-performance texture
compression. On-chip setup offloads polygon and texture shading
setup from the CPU, resulting in an overall performance
increase. On-chip hidden-surface removal, one of the PowerVR
architecture's most significant differentiators, eliminates
memory bottlenecks, reducing 3D memory requirements and
delivering market-leading price/performance.

Dramatic improvements in 3D image quality include perspective-
correct ARGB Gouraud shading; specular highlights with offset
color; unified frame buffer and texture memory for
environmental mapping; 32-bit floating-point hidden surface
removal accuracy; high resolutions up to 1600x1200 at true
color (24- bit); and full-scene anti-aliasing using image super
sampling. In addition, the PowerVR Second-Generation technology
supports texture compression and a wide range of texture,
filtering and blending modes, as well as advanced realism
features, such as bump mapping and special effect volumes.

Five chip-level products across three key platforms will be
introduced in the next 12 months, all utilizing the PowerVR
Second-Generation technology, and delivering a wide range of
price/performance options. Product availability,
specifications and pricing information will be released
shortly.

Phoenix Technologies Delivers Software to SGS Thomson's Single
Chip Consumer PC Line
(February 27)

Phoenix Technologies Ltd. announced it is providing system-
enabling software from its PICO Group to SGS Thomson for use on
future products such as the ST PC Consumer, a multimedia PC on
a single chip. They will provide support for the ST PC Consumer
with PhoenixPICO BIOS, PhoenixPICO Power Management features
and development tools. With these PICO Software Foundations,
system integrators can now incorporate SGS Thomson's ST PC
Consumer microprocessor into new Information Appliance
products. This agreement builds on Phoenix's continued position
as the industry leader providing key system-enabling
technologies to Information Appliance manufacturers worldwide.

Phoenix PICO software foundations provide developers of
Information Appliances with critical software for system
management and improved functionality. PhoenixPICO BIOS is the
industry standard foundation layer for high performance
Industrial Appliances. PhoenixPICO Power Management provides
system and device power control for mobile systems.

www.phoenix.com

Philips Semiconductors Launches First-ever Single-chip MPEG2
Video Encoder for Home PCs
(March 3)

Philips Semiconductors announced the first-ever single-chip
MPEG2 video encoder for home PCs. The single silicon chip,
SAA6750H, which takes both PAL or NTSC format video signals and
generates MPEG2 Elementary Stream (ES), allows home PC users a
low-cost way to store analog (VCR) video in a digital form on
various media, such as CD or DVD. This output is fully
compliant with the MPEG2 standard (ISO 13818-2) and is
compatible to a 16-bit parallel interface with Motorola (68xxx
like) or Intel (xxx86 like) protocol style.

The SAA6750H uses motion estimation algorithms that were
specially developed in the Philips Research Laboratories to
achieve both a high quality and a high-compression factor at
very low cost. By using only I and P frames, a reduction in
overall system build cost is achieved, e.g. only 2MB of DRAM is
needed compared to at least 4MB for IPB coding, and edit of the
compressed streams is improved. High picture quality can be
reached at around 4-8Mbit/sec. It also has an algorithm that
reduces noise on the input video before it is compressed.

The SAA6750H is the first device to use a patented, motion-
compensated temporal noise filtering technique, which Philips
developed for professional equipment to get rid of any noise
and deliver a picture quality that can be even better than the
original.

The software algorithms all run on a specially developed on-
chip, high performance processor accompanied by over 20KB of
on-chip microcode in RAM. This approach of using programmable
microcode software provides considerable flexibility to
customize and adapt the functionality of the chip.

Other applications include using the chip to encode broadcast-
quality video for storage on disc or encoded transmission.

www.semiconductors.philips.com

S-MOS Launches CARD-486D4 for Windows CE, and CARD-586 AMD's
5x86 133 MHz
(March 16)

S-MOS Systems Inc. introduces the two newest and most advanced
products in its CARD-PC (formerly CARDIO) "business card size"
computer series with CARD-486D4 for Windows CE and the CARD-586
AMD's AM5x86-133MHz.

Both CARD-PC embedded devices are aimed at powering the next
generation of portable, handheld and mobile PC products.

CARD-486D4 has several versions for Windows CE depending on
DRAM size and CPU clock. DRAM is available from 4MB to 32MB and
the CPU clock is available from 40MHz to 100MHz. The power
consumption of the CARD-486D4, 40MHz, 4MB DRAM, for example, is
about 2.5 watt at operation, and 3 miliwatt at suspend mode.
Evaluation demo units for CARD-486D4 with Windows CE 2.0 will
be available in April 1998.

CARD-586 series measures 85.6m x 54.0m and is packed with sub
system components that include video controller supporting
color and monochrome (640 x 80 text and 1.024 x 768 graphics
and up to 256 colors) on CRT and LCD’s, keyboard and mouse I/O
controller, hard and floppy disk drive interfaces and IrDA 1.0
compliance. Power consumption of CARD-586 is 4.5W at 133MHz-
clock rate. Both CPU and video performance of the CARD-586 at
133MHz are 33% faster than the CARD-486D4 100MHz version.
Pricing for CARD-586 starts at $500 each in quantities of 1,000
depending on DRAM. Volume shipments are expected by May 1998.

www.smos.com

AMP, Molex To Support Direct Rambus for PC Main Memory
(February 17)

Rambus Inc. announced that industry-leading connector
manufacturers AMP Inc. and Molex Inc. have joined the growing
list of companies who are supporting the use of Direct Rambus
technology in system memory. Both companies will develop and
supply Direct Rambus RIMM memory module sockets. More than 20
companies have now pledged support for the forthcoming PC main
memory standard.

www.rambus.com.

Wave Issue 9804 3/27/98 Article 5-01